Windows 7 can see but not access OS X share

In OS X, Windows sharing is on and I have "Shared folder" checked on the folders I want to share. OS X can access shared folders on the Windows box, but Windows can't access the OS X shared folders. Windows prompts for a "network password". I don't know what that would be, but I set up user accounts on both machines with the same user names and passwords. I've tried entering these credentials but nothing ever works.

I believe the problem is that OS X isn't on the same workgroup (or ANY workgroup) as the Windows box.

In OS X, System Preferences > Network > Advanced... > WINS tab:
If I enter the NetBIOS name of the OS X computer and the name of the Windows Workgroup (default "WORKGROUP") click OK, then Apply, this fixes it and Windows can access the shares on OS X and doesn't prompt for a network password.

But it is only a temporary fix. Rebooting OS X clears out the values I entered in the WINS tab, even if I have "clicked the lock to prevent further changes".

I'm not even sure that this is the correct place to designate a Windows Workgroup name on OS X. Anyone know?

You likely are just running into an issue with changes MS made in Vista's networking that still exist today. Try the following from Post #8 in the thread below. The bottom of the post was updated for there being no Local Security Policy in the Home version of Windows.

You likely are just running into an issue with changes MS made in Vista's networking that still exist today. Try the following from Post #8 in the thread below. The bottom of the post was updated for there being no Local Security Policy in the Home version of Windows.

Sorry, but this has nothing to do with Vista or Win 7. This has to do with the fact that Apple dumped SMB due to licensing issues and uses a home baked SMB client that does not work well and is buggy. Like the fact that it does not show mounted SMB shares anymore in the left side of finder. The WINS bug is just one of many. If you have a domain controller, join the macs and the pc to the same domain sometimes helps. Sometimes you need to turn off file sharing and then fix the wins and then turn your file sharing back on. I have contacted Apple many times about this...you should as well.

Sorry, but this has nothing to do with Vista or Win 7. This has to do with the fact that Apple dumped SMB due to licensing issues and uses a home baked SMB client that does not work well and is buggy. Like the fact that it does not show mounted SMB shares anymore in the left side of finder. The WINS bug is just one of many. If you have a domain controller, join the macs and the pc to the same domain sometimes helps. Sometimes you need to turn off file sharing and then fix the wins and then turn your file sharing back on. I have contacted Apple many times about this...you should as well.

No, OS X server has the same problems. Samba changed to the GPLv3 license and apple did not accept the license, so they made their own SMB implementation.

The easiest way to fix this is to setup an old computer as a WINS server for your local network and the OS X box can pull those wins values from the server on boot.

Click to expand...

Wow. This sucks. Why does Apple's SMB implementation have to suck so bad? I don't want to be running an old computer all the time just to fix this.

What if I entered a "dummy" IP address into the WINS servers list? Would that work LOL? All that's needed is for OS X to know the name of the workgroup it is supposed to be on. As long as it knows that, everything works.

Wow. This sucks. Why does Apple's SMB implementation have to suck so bad? I don't want to be running an old computer all the time just to fix this.

What if I entered a "dummy" IP address into the WINS servers list? Would that work LOL? All that's needed is for OS X to know the name of the workgroup it is supposed to be on. As long as it knows that, everything works.

Click to expand...

unfortunately no, you have to remember that apple had to write their smb code from scratch starting with lion. Maybe it's based on an old samba version though, not really sure.

perhaps you could put together a script to add the workgroup name at boot up?

Plus going from a 10.9.x or better OS X system and are trying to connect to Windows 7 or better using the string cifs:// instead of the smb://. This forces SMB2 to use the SMB1 connection instead. Windows 7 or better connects better with this command.

We have two servers running using OS X Server, occasionally and under duress I connect with a Windows machine. One server operates as normal, the other (identical settings, even with lots of tweaks) I have the issue where the Windows machine can "see" the server but never prompts for the login information and gives me "Windows cannot access" I solved this by typing the IP address of the computer I am trying to access instead of using the host name. You can see the IP address when viewing the File Sharing panel in System Preferences.

Please know that the Mountain Lion OSX, Mavericks OSX and Yosemite OSX domian controllers does not accept LM, NTLM, LMv2, and NTLMv2 responses so if the Win 7 and Win 8.1 sends the LM, NTLM, LMv2, and NTLMv2 responses to MAC with these OSes it does not get responses back so the connection is unsuccessfull from the Win 7 or Win 8.1 side so the problem is in the Win 7 or Win 8.1 operating system which does not allow the connection to be made!

If you need this DWORD line in the registry you can stil connect from the MAC environment to the Win 7
or Win 8.1 shares!
But you can not connect from Win 7 or Win 8.1 environment to MAC OSX shares!

This worked for me, thanks so much. I was worried that my problem was that my Windows laptop is on a domain rather than a workgroup, and hence my I wouldn't be able to assign the same workgroup in WINS on my Mac. But I tried this and voila, I can map my shared folders onto my Win7 laptop.

Just an update for future people that find this thread: You do NOT need to go changing registry keys in Windows to get this to work.

Do what SStamatis has mentioned, which is simply to change file sharing settings on OSX (Yosemite in my case) to use SMB _and_ individually select which OSX accounts should be accessible by the windows machine.

Here are SStamatis instructions again (edited for clarity):

"on Your mac computer, Go to System Preferences, enable File Sharing, click on the Options button, enable "share files and folders using SMB" and then enable (via the checkbox) each OSX account in the "Windows file sharing" section"

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